Day 051: Tuesday 6th November, 2012
One Minute to Midnight (Wisconsin)

"Hey, pass me the torque wrench?"

"Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now."

"Oh my god, The Blues Brothers. I haven't watched that in years!"



Kurt (08:53am) – [Sent to: ALL CONTACTS] Have you voted?
April (9:12am) – Yes, dummy. Remember we all did our absentee ballots at the same time?
Toby (10:32am) – We managed to coordinate lunch breaks so we can head over together—thanks for the reminder.
Marshall (11:01am) – Of course! Thanks again for all your help with the door to door this summer. Now we wait.
Zoe (11:11am) – Got my sticker and everything. Make the right wish!
Blaine (12:59pm) – On my way back, got into a debate with an anti-O. They were out of the sandwich you wanted so I got you an Italian Club instead. Need anything else while I'm out?
Jen P (1:44pm) – IMG_20121106_9368.jpg; voting lines around the block! :)
Dad (4:19pm) – Taking a quick break before I head back out. Had about twenty so far, mostly people still getting over Sandy. Now relax, you've done enough.
Carole (4:54pm) – Never realized all of this driving around would be so exhausting! Don't know how you two do it! Getting them all to the polls has been worth it though, even if just for some of the characters I've met today. Missing you and Blaine, hope you're taking care of yourselves.
Finn (5:02pm) – Just got off work and heading straight to the polling station. Good luck tonight, dude.
Blaine (6:00pm) – Where are you? It's starting!

Kurt smiled crookedly, anticipation fluttering at his insides, and pocketed his phone. He was standing outside Madison's, a bar on King Street, having a much-needed moment to himself after what had been a thoroughly crazy day. It felt freeing beyond measure to have things to occupy his mind, to keep him from thinking too much about how he'd been behaving, and how he'd now spent two lonely nights out on the couch because he couldn't quite bring himself to address what had and hadn't passed between him and Blaine.

He'd thought that what he'd done in Chicago was at least partly about revenge, but it hadn't been about that at all—it had been about proving something he thought he knew about himself but that turned out to be a gross mistruth; an itch that he'd needed to scratch, but when he finally did it wasn't satisfying in the least. And then he'd seen the hurt in Blaine's eyes, and his stomach had flipped like a pancake, and he'd known without question that he'd fallen in love with Blaine sometime beyond memory.

But how was that fair? How was it fair to fall in love only to be forced, through circumstance and the rules he'd laid down, to fall back out of it again just as quickly?

In light of everything there was to be done, he and Blaine had reached some sort of unspoken d�tente, declaring without words a moratorium on their issues so that they could concentrate on following up all of their summer efforts toward both President Obama's re-election campaign and the campaign for marriage equality in their home state. And today was the day that all their efforts would hopefully come to fruition.

He sighed once, allowing himself a moment's grace. Somehow, he would make things right between them, but tonight was not the night.

When he stepped inside, Blaine waved him over to the bar with a rueful half-smile. Kurt wound his way through the tall tables and stools crowded with people, grimacing as he passed by a group of students crowded around a small, wall-mounted electronic jukebox playing Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good, and made his way towards Blaine.

"Have they called any yet?" he asked, sliding onto an empty bar stool and taking a sip of the cocktail Blaine slid across to him.

"Indiana and Kentucky for Romney, Vermont for Obama," Blaine replied succinctly, tilting his head toward Kurt but not looking away from the screen over the bar that was playing NBC News. He rested his elbows on the bar, clasping his hands and absently chewing on his thumbnail; nerves were practically radiating off him in waves. Tentatively, Kurt slid his hand over, fingers splayed and wiggling to catch Blaine's attention. It felt a little like it had back in Provincetown: a hand reaching out for more where there had never been more. Only this time, it was Kurt trying to push back unturnable tides.

When Blaine finally took his hand, though, Kurt thought that maybe together they could do it.

"What about Question 1? Any news?" he asked, referring to the bill on Maine's ballot that, if passed, would grant marriage equality to same-sex couples.

Blaine shook his head and took a large gulp of his beer, then grabbed a napkin and wiped across his mouth. "What if—"

"B," Kurt interrupted, breaking their grasp to loosely work his fingers up into Blaine's curls. "This is our year."

At last, Blaine gave him a real smile. After he'd briefly leaned into Kurt's touch, and after Kurt had bitten his lip against the urge to kiss his smile wider, they joined hands again and settled in to watch.

The hours passed at a crawl, and the tension only grew as more and more people filtered into the bar. Despite the air conditioning and the cool temperatures outside, it quickly became hot, and before long, the scents of beer and body odor were lazily permeating the air.

At 7:00pm, they cheered as Maine was called for Obama along with Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. At 8:30pm, the entire bar erupted with triumphant whoops as Wisconsin went blue. And at 10:54pm, when early results showed marriage equality ahead in Maine, Blaine's unfailing grip on Kurt's hand suddenly became so tight that it almost hurt. His expression was clouded as he looked at Kurt, his gaze piercing.

Suddenly uncomfortable under the weight of Blaine's scrutiny, Kurt shifted in his seat and signaled the bartender for another round.

"Do you think you'll ever capitalize on it?" Blaine asked.

"Capitalize on what?"

"Marriage equality," Blaine clarified. "If we get it, I mean."

"Of course we'll get it," Kurt said, repeating, "This is our year."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't know."

"Why not?" Blaine probed.

"I mean, I'd like to think there's someone out there who could put up with me 'til death do us part, but..." Kurt trailed off with a shrug.

"There is someone, you know," Blaine said, as matter-of-factly as if he was commenting on the weather.

"What are you saying?" Kurt asked slowly.

Blaine took a long, deliberate drink from his bottle, and squarely met Kurt's questioning look. "There is someone who can put up with you. He's been doing it seventeen years already."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say," Kurt said weakly, his stomach twisting into a tight knot. There was no way Blaine could be saying what Kurt thought he was saying—not with their rules, and especially not with what Kurt had done.

"Just that," Blaine replied, his voice infuriatingly mild.

"What about you?" Kurt asked, shifting in his seat to more fully face Blaine.

A soft, barely-there smile had the corners of Blaine's mouth twitching, and at length he responded, "If the time was right, if he was the right guy... Yeah, I think I'd like to get married."

"Proposal?" Kurt prompted, resting his chin in his hand. For all the trouble he had with the word 'love,' and despite the fact that he'd vehemently deny any such accusation, buried beneath his layers upon layers of armor and resistance was a young man who, try as he might, couldn't help being a romantic.

"Something simple," Blaine answered, looking thoughtful. "Quiet and intimate, just the two of us. Not on an anniversary or a birthday or Christmas. Definitely not on Valentine's."

"You or m—him?" Kurt forced out, quickly covering his slip and clearing his expression as much as he was able. He couldn't keep letting his mind run away with his tongue, he couldn't—it felt too much like cheating himself. He cleared his throat, and added, "Would you be the one getting swept off your feet or the one doing the sweeping?"

"I hadn't ever really thought that far ahead," Blaine admitted, picking at the label on his beer bottle where the condensation was causing it to peel away from the glass. "Either way you end up pretty vulnerable."

"Isn't that the point of love, though? Being vulnerable but being okay with it?"

"No. It's being vulnerable but trusting the other person not to betray that vulnerability."

Kurt found himself nodding even at the same moment as it hit him with blunt, bruising force exactly what Blaine was talking about. It was an unexpected segue, but a segue nonetheless—perhaps now was the time to make things right, after all.

Not a second after he opened his mouth to speak, everyone in the bar cheered. Kurt's head snapped up to look at the television screen, where he saw a smartly dressed blonde anchorwoman holding her earpiece and saying, "Once again, that's Iowa, California, and Washington for President Obama. I'm just waiting for confirmation..."

A deathly quiet enveloped the inside of Madison's, and without giving it a moment's thought, Kurt leaned over to press his forehead to Blaine's temple, eyes slipping closed as he waited. Blaine squeezed Kurt's knee and left his hand there; Kurt covered it with his own, and took a deep breath.

"And with two hundred and seventy-four electoral votes, we are now calling this election for President Barack Obama."

The force of Blaine's hug, arms thrown tightly around him with Blaine's face buried in the hollow of his neck, almost toppled Kurt from his stool. He grabbed the bar with one hand to right himself and then held Blaine tightly, thoughtlessly pressing a fleeting kiss into his hair.

Looking around the bar, he saw other couples and groups of friends hugging, exchanging high fives and fist bumps, and there were even two girls by the door to the restrooms wiping away each other's joyful tears. The group of students sitting by the jukebox had changed the music to Proud by Heather Small, and Kurt grinned despite himself, letting himself revel in the simple, uncomplicated, unbridled elation of the moment.

Blaine had always been so expressive that Kurt never had difficulty reading his emotions on his face—an exaggerated downward quirk of his mouth when trying not to laugh; a tilt of his head and furrowing of his brow when giving sympathy; a slight but unmistakable widening of his eyes and a flush of anticipation in his cheeks when getting turned on—but when Blaine broke their hug, clearing his throat and awkwardly settling his open hands on his thighs like he didn't know what to do with them, Kurt had no idea what to say or do. The water was flowing fast between them instead of beneath the bridge, but did he need to simply divert it or build the bridge from the ground up? At this point, either action looked likely to require a Herculean effort, and skills he couldn't be sure he possessed.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening passed in a blur of exchanging goodwill and congratulations with the other patrons of the bar as they all waited for Romney's concession and Obama's acceptance. By 11:59pm, in the midst of the merriment surrounding them, Kurt had almost forgotten about Question 1.

One minute to midnight, and the news ticker at the bottom of the television screen suddenly read, 'Breaking News.' Kurt sat up straighter on his stool, his hand automatically gravitating toward Blaine's. A replay of Romney's concession speech cut to the same blonde anchorwoman from earlier, her make-up looking like it had been retouched.

She was smiling as she reported, "And while we're waiting for President Obama's acceptance speech, Maine has this evening made history as the first state to vote by referendum to back marriage equality."

It was as if he and Blaine had formed their own private vacuum of two: sound ceased to exist, and the air was hard to come by. There were tremors in Blaine's hands, almost imperceptible at first but growing until he was shaking violently, his eyes still glued to the television screen.

"Hey," Kurt said, squeezing his hand. "Hey, look at me. B, look at me."

Blaine's eyes swam and shone, even in the dimmed light of the bar, and for a moment he looked as if he didn't recognize Kurt. Then his expression cleared, and he pitched forward to take Kurt's face in his trembling hands and kiss him: softly and tenderly, like a first kiss at the end of a first date, at the beginning of the rest.

God, I love you, Kurt thought, stretching himself into the kiss and welcoming the feeling of Blaine's full lips skating over his own in long bursts, not caring at all that they were in public and acting like the very people he'd professed to hate all the way back in Florida.

Blaine inhaled sharply and broke away, eyes remaining closed for a moment. Kurt glanced to their left to see the bartender watching them with a wry smile.

"I'm guessing you guys are from Maine?" he asked, taking their empties and putting them behind the bar. At Kurt's nod, he continued, "Champagne's on the house if one of you proposes."

Blaine snorted, and it all came screaming back. "Unlikely when we're not even an item," he said, a weariness in his voice that Kurt hated with every fiber of his being.

"Could've fooled me," the bartender said, and moved off to serve some customers further down the bar—or rather refuse service, considering the way they were already practically falling over one another.

Surprisingly, the assumption didn't irritate Kurt like he was expecting it to. The way he and Blaine interacted with one another, he couldn't exactly blame someone for thinking they were together. Quite rightly, people believed what they could see—but in a way, Kurt mused, that also blinded them.

He, on the other hand, was seeing clearly—perhaps for the first time. He knew exactly what he needed to do, and that was to pursue his atonement, clear the air, and wipe away this heaviness that had come between them. It was almost too intense for him to bear.

"Told you it was our year," Kurt said, and Blaine shot him a sheepish grin. It looked freer than Kurt had felt all night, and he thought that maybe the tide was turning anyway.



Distance: 5,900 miles